Whate’er concerns you full as well,
In physic, stolen goods, or love,
As he himself could when above.”
THE BROTHERS SIBLY.—EBENEZER SIBLY, M.D., F.R.C.P., ASTROLOGER, ETC.
Here also may be mentioned the once famous Dr. Ebenezer Sibly, the physician and astrologer, and his brother Manoah, who by turns was shoemaker, shorthand reporter, and preacher of the “heavenly doctrines” of the New Jerusalem Church. However great a figure these men may have made in their day, they have managed to drop so completely out of notice that no encyclopædia, biographical dictionary, or magazine[123] the writer has met with contains any account of them. They are said to have been born in Bristol, and to have been brought up to the gentle craft.[124] The first edition of Ebenezer Sibly’s “Astrological Astronomy” was published in 1789, in three vols. 8vo, and was entitled “Astronomy and Elementary Philosophy,” being a translation of Placidus de Titus. The various editions of this work contain a collection of remarkable nativities, and among them Sibly includes that of Thomas Chatterton, “the marvellous boy” of Bristol.[125] Of course the astrologer sees in the horoscope of Chatterton sure signs of remarkable genius. Sibly was frequently consulted both for astrological and medical purposes, the two professions, astrology and medicine, being regarded as having a certain necessary relation. At all events, it answered the purposes of men like Sibly and Partridge to associate them in their practice. Human credulity dies hard, the race of fools seems to be endowed with wondrous vitality; even as late as 1826 Sibly’s “Celestial Science of Astrology,” in two bulky 4to vols., was published in a twelfth edition, and at that time there must have been many readers of his costly works[126] on the “Occult Sciences, comprehending the Art of Foretelling Future Events and Contingencies by the Aspect and Influences of the Heavenly Bodies.” This work was accompanied by a key to physic and the occult sciences. “Many of my readers,” says the author of “Crispin Anecdotes,” “otherwise indebted to Dr. Sibly, may remember his solar and lunar tinctures, and may probably have experienced their efficacy in transmuting gold coin into aurum potabile!” In his astrological works and his edition of “Culpepper’s Herbal,” Sibly signs himself “M.D.,” “Fellow of the Royal Harmonic Philosophical Society at Paris,“ ”Member of the Royal College of Physicians in Aberdeen,” etc., etc. The “Herbal” is dated in the year of Masonry 5798, and is written from No. 1 Upper Tichfield Street, Cavendish Square, London. We have no record of the death of this illustrious son of Crispin, who, perhaps, had better have stuck to his last. He is called “the late E. Sibly, M.D.,“ in the 1817 edition of his ”Celestial Science.”
MANOAH SIBLY, SHORTHAND WRITER, ETC.
Manoah Sibly appears to have been a man of more varied and certainly of much more useful gifts than his brother “the doctor;” but it may well be doubted if he made as much capital out of them. He was born August 20th, 1757.[127] If the writer above quoted be correct in saying that Manoah was a shoemaker, he must have made good use of his spare time, and even of his working hours, for at the age of nineteen he is said to have been teaching Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. During the greater part of his life he was a prominent preacher in connection with the New Jerusalem or Swedenborgian community. For fifty-three years, from the time of his ordination in 1790, he held the pastorate of the congregation for which the Friars Street Chapel, London, was built in 1803. This congregation is now represented by the well-known Argyle Square Church, King’s Cross, where a tablet to his memory has been erected. Manoah Sibly does not seem at any time to have been wholly occupied with the work of preaching, although he delivered two sermons a week for forty-three years, and one a week for the remaining ten of his ministry. “Whether he dabbled in the muddy waters of astrology or no, it is rather hard to tell; probably he left the task of reading the stars, for the most part, to his more astute brother, Ebenezer. At any rate, a translation of Placidus de Titus is set down in certain lists as having been published in his name in 1789;[128] and when he opened a shop as a bookseller, he dealt chiefly in works on occult philosophy. In 1795 he is styled shorthand writer to the City of London on the title-page of the published reports from his own notes of the trial of Gillman and of Thomas Hardy, the political shoemaker, whose trial and acquittal created so great an excitement throughout the country. Two years after this he obtained a situation in the Bank of England, which he held for no less than forty-three years. In addition to all this multifarious work, he found time for writing and slight editorial duties. In 1796 a volume of sermons preached in the New Jerusalem Temple appeared in his name, and in 1802 he edited a liturgy for his own church, and wrote a hymn-book. If in no other way, his memory will be perpetuated among his coreligionists by the hymns that bear his name. His first published work was a critical essay on Jeremiah 38:16, issued in 1777; and his last, a discourse on “Jesus Christ, the only Divine object of Praise,” delivered on the forty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the “heavenly doctrines,” appeared fifty-six years after, viz., in 1833. Manoah Sibly’s long life of fourscore and three years came to an end December 16th, 1840.